Highlights

Dean Blunt“Papi”

On May 1, our lives will change for[ever/the better] when Dean Blunt — provocateur, stalker, and all-around cute guy — releases his first “proper” solo album, The Redeemer on Hippos In Tanks/World Music. To get you excited, Blunt just released a track from the album titled “Papi,” which features clear-as-day vocals over a sample of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes.” It ends with a canny New Year’s countdown, unsettling and awkward, as it should be.

“Applesauce”

So, when I first heard “Applesauce” off the last AnCo album Centipede Hz, it was WAY my jam-shit. I mean, it’s still my jam-shit, but director Gaspar Noé just made “Applesauce” that much more MORE MORE in this here new video for the track. And I ain’t gotta say the obvious, but creative interpretation is just OOZING in this video. I love it. It’s also totally questionable if this video is work appropriate. I’ve been flicking back and forth through the thought of guilt this entire time. COLORS ARE EVERYWHERE RIGHT NOW!!!

“Stalker 5 (future favela ipanema 2069 VIP mix)”

We have no idea where these stalker videos are going (if they’re going anywhere), but here we have the fifth installment of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland’s “stalker” series anyway, and things are as confusing as they were before. This is actually sorta like the sixth installment, since there was a New Jersey edition of stalker #5 last year, but in any case, here we have the stalker finding himself in Rio de Janeiro, sitting awkwardly on a chair. It’s (kinda) fucked up. It’s (kinda) scary. It’s (definitely) #waynerooney #nike #sparkplugs and #motorcycles.

Fly Zone [mixtape]

Red lights are flashing in strobes, and motion has become dancing the way your body bends with everyone in the crowd, with her next to you but shoulder to shoulder, breathing as heavy as that Fly Zone beat running through your insides, FEELING everyone’s insides vibrating at once in smoke or mist or fog — “What’s that smoke?” she nods yes, as everyone on the floor is coughing in a plume of colors; “Who is this?” you ask, and with her hands, she spells out LE1F, to which you shrug with everyone else waving their body and shrugging, but she stops and looks at you, takes you by your hand, and you and she are running down the stairs and you feel the rush hit you as you slip onto your ass and then your head, and you thought “seeing stars” was a saying until they fade away and she appears staring at you, mouthing something about being okay-okay-OK okay, and she helps you up and [the formal] YOU’re out the door, maybe smoking a cigarette, still very disoriented from living a life you’re, like, “Wait, are we leaving this right now, or does that LE1F dude play the same music there every weekend, ‘cause shit is all encompassing, no? Like, in a way where I’d want that experience to happen again, but with someone else, as something always random, you feel me?” and she walks away screaming about pop or soda or cola, as you head back toward the club for one more ride.

honestly

Hey guess what, surfers? Will Burnett (who we know best around here as INTERNET CLUB, but also as Datavis, ECCO UNLIMITED, among others) has released some fresh silky synthetic new material. This time, he’s calling himself monument XIII, and the new record is titled honestly. And honestly, honesty could be a theme here with these new tunes. The vaporwave boom of 2012 was a wondrous thing, but it was hard for some people to take seriously — and for good reason. A lot of artists may have produced this new digital age music tongue-in-cheek, as they chopped and screwed call-waiting muzak and pitch-shifted the fuck out of Sade vocals. Burnett has been a leading figure in this movement to make super-cheesy sound hella-dope, and perhaps now it’s time to be honest. monument XIII takes a layer of cheese off and adds some rich, organic ingredients like raw saxophone and tracks of pure drone, to create a simpler and more natural product. Kinda like Papa John’s.

“Carios kelleyi I”

For being recorded in his apartment, “Carios kelleyi I” sounds surprisingly wide open. Typically with all of this lo-fi pop, the prison of bedroom walls gives the music a claustrophobic feel. I mean mentally and physically, like the sound range of every note hits its own ceiling within the limitations of the recording device. But all of the percussion, softly plucked notes, and windy vocals carry onward and upward past physical limitations. It’s a big sound for someone limited by noise complaints from his neighbors, which may account for the continuing soft haze that coats every Julian Lynch album. It’s the warmth of the home studio and the polite daring of recording the loud parts only when you think your neighbors have left for work.

“Carios kelleyi I” is the first single from Lynch’s upcoming Underwater Peoples album, Lines, out March 26. Listen to it below: